Smartphone Scanner

A simple and flexible "scanner" for taking steady photos with a smartphone

Creator

jess yurko

Tags

scanner (1)

Ingredients

smartphone (1)
legos (1)
good light (2)

Directions

1. pick a lego base a little bigger than the stuff you want to document (mine is 32x32 and works for medium sized moleskines and 8.5x11 paper).
2. holding your smartphone above the base, figure out how high it needs to be to capture the bounds you want.
3. build up a lego wall on two opposite sides of the base (i.e. at 3 and 9 on a clock). mine is 11 dots wide, 2 dots deep, and 22 blocks high. it is placed 3 dots in (from the side at 6:00).
4. build a bridge (1 dot wide, 2 blocks high) between one edge of the two walls. repeat for the other edge
5. fill in the rest of each wall between the two bridges
6. build a cross piece connecting the two bridges about a third of the way across. this is a guide for your phone, so play around to find the right location.
7. to use, just put your drawing / sketches / books / objects on the base, line your phone up with the guide, and document away. for iphones, you can plug in headphones and click the volume adjustment button to act as a trigger so you don't accidentally move the camera when you touch the screen. (you could also use a timer.)

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Related Ingredients